Friday, November 20, 2009

A Dead Friend & My Five Stages of Grief

I awoke the other day to the news that a dear if distant friend had been struck and killed by a car backing up a one-way street. From the outset, I was very aware of how my grief caromed from feeling to feeling, and while the fit was not perfect, I pretty much went through Elisabeth Kübler-Ross's classic Five Stages of Grief.

I am an intermittent but extremely vivid dreamer, so it took a while to work through DENIAL and realize that Dick was indeed dead, I had not dreamed that he was dead and I had in fact spoken to my sister on the phone about him being dead.

Dick had lost his beloved mate of many years to a horrible death from cancer. He had rebounded and married a wonderful widow about his age, so I was quite ANGRY that the love of his life had been taken from him and then he from his second love.

BARGAINING typically applies to someone who has been diagnosed with a fatal malady and tries to forestall the inevitable, but I did wonder whether he wouldn't have been standing standing in that street if he had been somewhere with me.

I next lapsed into DEPRESSION , was snippy with loved ones who tried to console me and had sick headache. All I wanted to do was be alone.

And then I segued into ACCEPTANCE. I still wanted to be alone, but understood that fate had dealt Dick a cruel hand and that it was better to cherish his specialness than dwell on the senselessness of his passing.


Truman Soloist said...

Will there be any justice for someone having taken his life (and for his widow)?

Shaun Mullen said...

Well, "justice" is kind of a malleable term in this instance. The incident appeared to be accidental, while neither Dick nor his widow were and are eye-for-an-eye folks.